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The Soulful Baritones of R&B Vol. 1

Fifty-nine tracks selected on one criterion: the voice has to sit low and mean it. This is a playlist about the bottom of the male range.

The register that built quiet storm radio

There is a specific thing a deep male voice does in soul music, and it has almost nothing to do with power. A baritone sitting close to the microphone at a slow tempo creates an intimacy that a tenor cannot — it is the reason the entire quiet storm format exists, and the reason so much of this repertoire is built for late-night listening.

What is impressive about this selection is its historical range. It runs from Ben E. King in 1961 to Leon Bridges and Leslie Odom Jr., and the through-line holds across sixty years because the physical quality being selected for does not change.

What to listen for

Donny Hathaway's "For All We Know" is the standard against which the rest of the playlist measures itself. Nobody has ever done more with less.

Barry White's "I've Got So Much To Give" is the most extreme example of the register — White's voice sits so low it is almost speech, and his arrangements built an entire aesthetic around it.

The Dells appear twice, and Marvin Junior's lead vocal is one of the most underappreciated instruments in soul history. "The Love We Had (Stays On My Mind)" is the essential.

Will Downing's "I Can't Make You Love Me" and Peabo Bryson's two entries represent the smooth end at its most accomplished.

Larry Graham's "When We Get Married" is worth noting — Graham invented slap bass in Sly and the Family Stone and then had a second career as a balladeer, which is a remarkably wide range of contributions.

L.T.D.'s "Love Ballad" features a young Jeffrey Osborne, and D-Train's "You're the Reason" brings the boogie era in.

Leon Bridges' "Lisa Sawyer" — about his mother — and Leslie Odom Jr. and Leon Timbo show the tradition is still being fed.

Go deeper

The Dells deserve proper investigation — a group that recorded across five decades with essentially the same lineup, which almost nobody managed.

Donny Hathaway Live, again, is the record everything in this territory answers to.

And for the outer limits of the register: Isaac Hayes, Teddy Pendergrass, Lou Rawls and Johnny Hartman — the last of whom made one album with John Coltrane that is among the most beautiful vocal records ever made.

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